James jolted awake in his bed. The alarm clock on his dresser told him that it was nearly 6 AM. He was covered with sweat and struggled to catch his breath. His throat burned, as though he had been coughing in his sleep, and his legs hurt.
At the young age of 12, James had had several intense dreams before. Some had been so intense that they had caused him to question his reality. One time, he dreamed that he had been visited in his driveway by someone who claimed to be a friend from elementary school. James had no memory of the person, who appeared to be only a few years older than he was at that time. At the time, he remembered going in to ask his mother about the person. But when he returned outside, the person had vanished entirely.
Later, when he casually mentioned this to his mother, she told him that she had no memory at all of the incident. The only explanation he could find was that it must have been an especially intense dream.
There was nothing else that could explain it. Right?
He could try his best to fall back asleep for the few minutes he had before school began, but knowing him, he’d likely sleep right through the alarm clock, even with its intensely irritating noise. He thought about telling his mom that he was sick. But she was already at work, and calling her there would make her upset, as she always seemed to be whenever he felt ill.
It wasn’t his fault, though, that he was sick, or that the sickness always seemed to happen right before he was about to head to school. Or when he had to go back to school for any sort of parent teacher conferences. Or when he even thought about the prospect of going to school.
Something about that place made him ill.
His mom seemed to think that he was just being lazy. Maybe that was true. She always said that he was just like his father in that way, a man he had never met nor had even seen pictures of. Maybe there was a genetic aspect that made him simply not want to work on anything at all.
Maybe it was the food they served. James had always been leery about the food they served. None of it looked natural.
Even still, there was a far more simple reason James didn’t like going to school. He was constantly dealing with bullies throughout the day.
Though Martinville was a small school, the relative percentage of kids who liked to pick on James felt inordinately high. There were the occasional shoulder shoves and foot trips, but the kids of Martinville seemed to revel far more in the idea of psychologically tormenting James. One time a kid had told him that his father must have run away once he saw James. Another felt free to insult James over the weight he had always seemed to retain, even though that kid had been infinitely heavier.
More and more, though, these kids were learning to keep their comments quiet enough that no adults could hear, but just loud enough that James would hear them. It was like walking through a room full of people, and getting poked with a tiny pin, which, ironically, had also been one of the ways someone had decided to have a go at James.
He would try to explain these things to his mother, but she often dismissed them, or simply told him to get thicker skin. She had already given up enough of her life for him, she wasn’t going to move and lose her job for him, as well. However, the years of the little needling at James were starting to make him regret his life. In many ways, he wished that whatever had chased him in his dream would simply swallow him up and take away the pain of it all.
Maybe today would end up being better, he hoped. Or the day after?
All he knew is that once he was gone from Martinville, he would never look back.
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